


if you must fight

by prometheancurse



Category: In the Flesh (TV)
Genre: Implied/Referenced Homophobia, Implied/Referenced Suicide, M/M, Past Drug Use
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2019-01-07
Updated: 2019-01-07
Packaged: 2019-10-06 05:13:13
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,775
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/17339216
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/prometheancurse/pseuds/prometheancurse
Summary: At least he can’t feel cold. He’s standing at Rick’s grave, the wind whipping at his bare face, residue rain plastering his hair to his head. Going out without cover-up still feels odd— as though he’d gone outdoors having forgotten to put on shoes.-A diptych: Kieren, and Simon, and the battles they must fight alone.





	if you must fight

 One upside to being undead is that Kieren doesn’t feel the cold anymore. He only wears layers on layers to blend in, to feel like himself again, but in all honesty he hadn’t needed a jacket ever since he came back from the dead.

There’s a long list of downsides, too, of course. The daily Neurotriptyline shot, for one. Not being able to eat his favourite foods (and _god,_ he misses being able to taste his mum’s roast chicken). The irritation of contact lenses, the half-hour he spends every day to apply his cover-up _just right_ and humanlike, and that damned limp he’d had to contend with ever since he became himself again, just to name a few more. Oh, and that’s not even getting into the small, inconsequential fact that he’s all but stuck in a village that hates him, doing the bloody Give Back scheme for the rest of his unlife.

At least he can’t feel cold. He’s standing at Rick’s grave, the wind whipping at his bare face, residue rain plastering his hair to his head. It’s still odd, going out without cover-up— as though he’d gone outdoors having forgotten to put on shoes.

It’s the first time he’d been to see Rick since the entire fiasco with Victus and the HVF blew up.

Back when Rick had gone off to basic training, Kieren had written letters to him, one a day, every day. At first the letters had been full of pleas for Rick to come back. ( _Why did you leave? I miss you. We can deal with your dad together, I promise, we can sort it the fuck out)_ . But that had been when he still had hope that Rick would still come back to Roarton, or write back to him at least. Then finality had settled in, and the unanswered pleas were replaced with pages upon pages of anecdotes, stray diary entries almost, about the various minutiaes of Roarton life. _Painted another portrait of you from memory— still can’t quite get the nose right but you’ll love it; Jem’s gotten into trouble at school again for punching some dickhead who put a spider down the back of her shirt; watched Fiddler on the Roof with dad and Jem the other day, she fell asleep halfway through but I loved it; everything’s bullshit, art school’s the only thing I’ve got to live for now without you here ~~fuck I hate you Rick Macey I love you why the fuck did you leave so much for RICK+REN 4EVER you fucking liar.~~_

Kieren’s not sure whatever became of those letters. Rick’s dad must have gotten his hands on them and burnt them all. (A hot flash of hatred: he half-wishes for a Second Rising just so he can see Bill Macey crawl out of his grave, so he can kill the man with his own two hands for what he did to them, to Rick.)

Telling Rick anything and everything that crossed his mind used to be so easy, but now Kieren’s tongue-tied in front of Rick’s tombstone, at loss for words. He finds it impossible to describe all that has happened throughout the past few weeks. (And really, how can he even begin to describe the impossibility that is Simon Monroe? The man who lived his undead life without shame and taught him to do the same, who’d thrown himself in front of a bullet for Kieren fucking Walker?)

He rifles through the events of the past months for the right beginning: Meeting Simon? Maxine Martin’s arrival? The truncated trip to Paris? But none of them feels right, somehow.

So Kieren stares at the gravestone with hands shoved in his pockets until the sky goes from pale to charcoal, and turns on his heels to limp out of the graveyard.

On his way past the new graveyard he notices a forlorn figure sitting cross-legged in front of Amy’s tombstone, a gloomy smear of grey. Any other day, he would have gone to Philip and asked him if he was all right, but he remembers the catatonic look on Philip’s face when they’d last seen each other at Amy’s second funeral. Philip deserves a moment of privacy with Amy. (And was that a stuffed toy in Philip’s lap? Kieren can’t tell from this distance. Better to let him mourn in peace.)

* * *

 Nobody answers the bell when Kieren arrives at the bungalow. The front door is unlatched, so he lets himself in thinking Simon is probably inside.

He’s greeted with the words _the dead shall rise again incorruptible_ splashed on one wall of the living room. But there’s no one around otherwise, and it’s almost as though Simon’s pack of followers had never been here. The emptiness unnerves him. He drifts through the place in search of signs of life.

Coming back to the bungalow so soon after Amy’s second death was perhaps a bad idea. Her sunshine presence still lingers in every room, like traces of the perfume she wears (no, _wore_ ) to cloak the corpse-rot. The grief he’d fought so hard to keep in check all through her funeral wells up in his throat. _(_ And he hears Amy’s bright voice in his head, _Oi, stop it, you handsome dumbo. I won’t have you crying over silly old me, all right?_ )

For a moment he wonders if Simon had up and left Roarton again without warning, this time for good. Maybe despite all Simon had said about staying put he’d decided he’s better off running, now that his mission for the Undead Prophet was done and he had nothing else to stay for. Maybe he’d gone back to his Prophet’s fold to ask for forgiveness, or, or he’s off doing more mystical Disciple shit he’d never really taken the time to explain to Kieren.

Simon’s things are still scattered in the pastel-wallpapered room that used to belong to Amy’s grandmother. A duffel bag in the corner (he hadn’t gotten around to unpacking after his trip to wherever the hell it is he went off to, apparently). Canisters of Neurotriptyline on the shelf in front of ikons of Jesus and Mary (homebrewed Neurotriptyline, Doctor Russo definitely wouldn’t approve). A book of poems open and face down on the bed (Kieren doesn’t exactly understand Simon’s fascination with Yeats) along with a Bible (had it belonged to the Dyers?).

Not gone, then.

Kieren’s about to leave and look for Simon somewhere else when he spots a rolled-up package in the dustbin, made of pale leather. Curious, he takes it out and sets it on the bed, but as he sits down and reaches out to tug the strings tying the pouch together his hand tremors involuntarily, violently. He frowns and grips his wrist in his other hand to stop the shaking. (The skin is mottled and flakey. In the early days of his return Kieren had been meticulous about applying cover-up on every bit of bare skin he could reach, but he’d soon learnt that mousse on his hands would only rub off upon contact and get everywhere. And there, that’s another downside to PDS— mousse that gets all over the place.)

The seizures finally subside and he unrolls the pouch with fingers still shaky from the aftermath. There are weapons in it. Bone saws in various sizes, a collection of grim blades that sends an undercurrent of cold through him.

Kieren had been so caught up in the vortex of grief and funeral preparations throughout the past few days that the question of why Simon had fled to the city had become a footnote in his mind. He touches one of the glinting blades (imagining rather than feeling the ice of metal), and wonders, _Was this what Simon had gone to collect?_

A fact: Simon Monroe had taken a bullet for him.

Another fact: Simon had thought he was some kind of First or Messiah or whatever stupid symbol of redemption for the undead Simon’s fucked-up cult believed so fervently in.

Two disparate but interconnected truths, and Kieren can’t seem to align them with the weapons laid out on the pink patchwork quilt like a surgeon’s tray.

He makes up his mind to ask Simon about it when he finds him.

As Kieren gets up he catches a glimpse of his own face in the dresser mirror. Bone-pale and gaunt, blotchy with rot. He’d spent so long looking away from mirrors that his own reflection is a stranger to him, someone else’s corpse, and he has to fight the raw instinct to flinch at those pinprick eyes.

The old litany drilled into him at Norfolk comes unbidden to his mind. _I am a Partially Deceased Syndrome sufferer, and what I did in my untreated state was not my fault._

It’s a reflex, almost a kind of Pavlovian response. The doctors at Norfolk had told their charges it was to ground them against the intermittent flashbacks, remind them of their own humanity, but Kieren had never understood the point. _Yes, I killed people,_ he’d insisted when it was his turn to speak up during sessions. _We all did. And no amount of hiding it behind guilt is going to change that._

Shit. He could have killed Jem. He could have killed _Dad_ , maybe even the whole bloody lot of them who had been so hungry to see him dead a second time or carted back to the treatment centre, and he still can’t make up his mind if they would have deserved it or not but he would have torn Roarton apart without hesitation up until one of them put a bullet in his hea—

_I am a Partially Deceased Syndrome sufferer, and what I did in my untreated state was not my fault._

He’d washed away every trace of the Blue Oblivion powder Gary had forced into him afterwards with Dr Russo’s help, but he still can’t help running a hand over the black hole in his spine just to make sure. The contact makes him shiver— his fingers are cold.

 _Cold_. Can’t be.

He hardly remembers what cold feels like.

Kieren stares back into his own eyes.

 _I am a Partially Deceased Syndrome sufferer, and what I did in my untreated state was not my fault._ _I am a Partially Deceased Syndrome sufferer, and what I did in my untreated state was not my fault._

_I am a Partially Deceased Syndrome sufferer—_

But no. Slipping the pouch of weapons into his pocket, Kieren rises from the bed.

He thinks, _I am a dead man risen from his grave, and I am putting the shards of my life back together, piece by piece._

**Author's Note:**

> i've been saying this for the past 5 years but bring back In the Flesh or fight me in the pit, BBC you cowards


End file.
